Having glanced at the schematic diagram, I’ll have questions. I’ll start a new thread when the time comes, and post images of the diagrams.
My nixie clock came in yesterday. Mine was already assembled.
Really impressed with the blending of modern circuity and the vintage nixie tubes. My clock has a remote that sets the date, time, display etc. Theres a display shut off feature that can be set for specific times. like 6pm-7Am would be a good time to turn off the display when I’m off work. Extends the life of the tubes.
I like the back light feature. the base of the tube glows in different colors. they were switching randomly every few minutes. I changed the setting so a different color represents each day of the week. pretty cool.
other features, 12 or 24 hour display, room temperature display, alarm clock
theres also a important feature to prevent nixie cathode poisoning. Every ten mins the clock will cycle through all the segments of the tube. thats by default and it is supposed to extend tube life.
I really should have built this myself from the kit. But I was concerned about finding good nixie tubes. Didn’t want to risk getting ripped off by a bad international ebay seller. Getting my money back from somebody on the other side of the world might be an issue. buying a working clock seemed like a safer choice.
I think Johnny L.A. will have a lot of fun assembling his clock. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of doing it yourself.
I took the easy way out. My loss that I can’t say I built it DIY. But I’m really enjoying this nifty gadget.
Photo
definitely need to keep it away from kids. It’s fragile and a kid could shove their finger into the circuit board. Runs off a 12v ac adapter (wall wart), so I don’t think there’s any really dangerous voltages. But I haven’t seen a schematic.
I’m going to need some help, but I’ll start another thread when I’m ready to begin. I copied the schematics and emailed it to myself. The circuit boards came through, but the parts list didn’t. For some reason, I can never get the copier to scan tables. It blanks them out. So I’ll have to type the parts list manually.
Nixies require around 100v to fire, so there’s (somewhat) dangerous voltages somewhere on the board.
Today I learned what a Nixie tube is. I like this place.
Looks better than the clock kit Think Geek sells. They have a thermometer kit as well. ISTR a nixie chess set, guess they don’t have enough tubes for them now.
ETA: found the chess set.
…and a pink band for high stability.
Have you a schematic of the clock, ace?
Mine is different, and looks like this one (only without the case, as it’s a kit).
I’m getting ready to start that construction thread. I have images of the boards and the schematic for my clock. I typed up the parts list this morning, and emailed it to myself. I want to look at some of the resistors and try to read the stripes so that I can say ‘This resistor has [these stripes] and I think it’s [this one],’ and see if I’m right. I may take some photos of the components.
In the meantime, here is the schematic for my clock. It’s a bit small (you can click the magnifying glass icon), but it may be decipherable when I post the other images and the list in the new thread.
If you like Nixie tubes you’d probably love looking at these Incandescent Displays that were alternatives to Nixies at about the same time. I have several NLS edge-lit displays and IEE projection displays (one-plane displays if you’re looking on eBay), both which give a retro-vibe similar to Nixies. One nice thing about these is they are “normal” voltages, from 5V to 24V, so if you’re squeamish about high voltage they’re a bit safer. They were also used in military applications (as annuciators, for example), so they’d handle stress and vibrations better than Nixie tubes, but have bulb burn-out issues. One of these days they’ll go into clocks, like this video.
Thanks, Johnny.
*“Big Brother Reptilian Overlords,” Yelled Glenn, “Brainwashing Via Ground Water!!!” * because I shy away from advocating to our youth either drinking alcohol or rape.
There’s a company in Russia called Sovtek that makes guitar amplifiers and tubes for them. Many guitarists prefer the “tube sound” and frankly, they don’t make that many of them over here anymore. I remember a time in 79 when one of the tubes in our Loran A transmitter failed and we had heck of a time finding a replacement. The band aid cure was finding another Loran A station that could spare one and the long term cure was a special order to the factory to take the tooling off the shelf and make the USCG a couple dozen.
That must have been pricey.
I don’t. The seller only provided a 5 page operations manual. I’m not sure who built my clock. It may have been the Ebay seller using plans from nixieclock.org
their website is printed on my circuit board.
I looked at their web site. He’s designed a bunch of Nixie clocks. Its a tough site to navigate. A lot of it is in Chinese.
Speaking of old display tubes. Anyone remember the cats eye tubes? I had a tube radio from the late 1950’s that used one. The cats eye indicated signal strength as the radio was tuned to a radio station.
heres the clock listing that I got. I negotiated a better price with Buy It Now
http://www.ebay.com/itm/181863708631?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
heres is the Nixie IN-14 clock on nixieclock.net
I think he’s offering plans or a kit? you’d have to use google to translate the page. Figure out what he’s offering. Should be much cheaper than buying a completed clock like I did.
http://www.nixieclock.org/?p=257
Oops, I meant Make Offer. I try not to use Buy It Now and pay full price. 
And your Professor didn’t scold you about that? You selected a resistor with 10% stability, which, since you had to select to get the desired value, means that it will drift out of the desired value.
I’m sorry to say that it sounds like your Professor was from the E6 range.
It probably was and it wasn’t by any extent the largest tube the CG used for Loran transmitters. It was probably part of the motivation for the CG to develop the solid state Loran transmitter. Big ass custom transistors were cheaper, I guess, than big ass tubes. And there were some other advantages, too.